Ms. Bearse's Site

Today we started graphing our bean growth.  We know that they will continue to grow over the next few weeks so we will leave some space to add more points to our graph.

We made sure that the axes have reasonable scales

And that we graphed our beans wih a legend so we can make sense of the results.

We had to figure out how to account for weekends, when we didn’t record data.  We can always interpolate later using our trend line.

The beans in the dark are looking long and spindly. They aren’t growing as fast as they were.  We will graph all the growth next week and see what the trends look like.

We are working on factoring algebraic expressions.  Today we visualized this by makingg rectangles out of algebra tiles.

The area inside the rectangle is the trinomial x^2+7x+12 and the factors are the length and width of the rectangle (x+3)(x+4).  This is the only combination of length and width that work for this polynomial.  We also noticed that there is a pattern.  3+4=7 (the middle coefficient of the polynomial) and 3×4=12, the constant term.

Things were a bit different today!  We had a bit of a search for our quiz questions.  They were all hidden in eggs around the room.

Each colour of egg had a different question.

After we solved that question we hid it again for our classmates to findEdit
We are working hard to understand how to add and polynomials and what exponents mean.  We represent them visually, in expanded form, or with algebra tiles to help us work with them.

It’s important to practice how to use calculators to evaluate expressions with exponents.

Today in physics class we are listening to a presentation about what engineers do and what problems engineers can solve.

Today we worked on our math review using a “speed dating” set up.  Partners sit across the table from each other and both solve the question in front of them.  Once both get the question, one side of the table stands up and shuffles one position to their left.  They will be sitting wih a new person and working on a new question.  They will have an expert sitting in front of them who ensures their expertise gets passed along.  After 5 minutes the “experts” will shift one space to their left and have a new partner and a new question.  

This method of review is good because everyone is working in a team, and gains knowledge and confidence working together.  Caution is needed to make sure that each question should take about the same amount of time to solve.

Today we looked at our beans.  There had been a tiny bit of growth when we checked them on Friday, but now hings are looking very exciting for some groups!

We planted them in small containers.

And put them in the sun or in the drawer

We are looking forward to measuring some progress soon!

Today we looked at representing exponents in a visual way.  We used a toothpick to represent x, and we built x squared by making a square with side length x.

We can represent multiple ideas using these tools.  Here are 3 x squared

If the number is in brackets and included in the base, it changes things.

Here is one square with dimensions 2x.  Inside it we can see that there are 4 x squares in the expression (2x)squared.

We were able to build x cubes too

It was harder to build bigger models like (3x)cubed because of the structural limitations.  We tried though!
We had a creative approach using plastecine that worked nicely
There are 27 little cubes in there!

Today we opened a phone hotel.  We ate these cookies and used the box to give our phones a rest.  We don’t always need technology, and it’s nice sometimes to be fully involved in what we are doing, and not distracted by intereuptions.

At the end of the class we had a look at what we missed.  Some of us had 16 notifications!  That would be a lot of distractions over the course of a 72 minute class.

We experimented in grade 9 today with bottles and the sound that they make when you blow over the opening.  This note will change with more or less liquid in the bottle.  We explored that relationship between the height of the air column and the frequency produced.
The frequency was measured with the app “sonic tools” (it’s free).
Some groups used big bottles, others used small bottles.  We did multiple trials to be sure our data was accurate.

We then plotted our data and are working on answering some questions.